In general, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) resins have been widely used for various purposes, such as automobile components, electric and electronic products, office machinery, home appliances, toys, stationery, and the like, due to beautiful appearance characteristics, and physical properties such as impact resistance of butadiene, processability, moldability and colorability of styrene, hardness and chemical resistance of acrylonitrile, etc. Most of such ABS resins are glossy, and exhibit high gloss or intermediate surface gloss.
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for low-gloss and gloss-less resins to create a desired aesthetic appearance and prevent glare. Also, with the rise of environmental issues, gloss-less resins tend to be directly used without using a process of applying a gloss-less paint or covering a pad.
Conventional gloss-less resin compositions can be prepared by adding or modifying a certain rubbery component. However, such a method can have problems in that a low-gloss effect can be poor, and impact strength and heat resistance can be degraded.
Another method graft-polymerizes a monomer such as ethylenically unsaturated carboxylic acid into an ABS polymer to solve the above problems. The prepared ABS polymer can have various good physical properties, but also can have degraded heat resistance.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,475,053 discloses a method of reducing gloss of a resin using a spherical graft copolymer as a matting agent, and Korean Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-0036790 discloses a method of reducing gloss using various copolymers as additives.
Also, U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,004 discloses a method of reducing gloss using rubber particles having a core/shell structure having a large particle size of 0.05 to 20 μm or 2 to 15 μm.
However, when the additive is used as in the technique described above, the manufacturing cost may increase, and problems such as peeling, degradation of physical properties, and a partial increase in gloss may be caused. Also, when large-sized rubber particles are used, gloss may be reduced, but impact strength may be significantly degraded.
Therefore, there is a demand for techniques capable of improving processability, impact resistance, hardness and/or low-gloss properties of a thermoplastic resin composition, such as an aromatic vinyl based thermoplastic resin composition.